


Must Be Madness

by Sarah1281



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/pseuds/Sarah1281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valjean hadn't known what to think when he turned back to the window and saw that Javert had left that night. Hadn't he said he would wait right there? It was beyond belief that he would have just let him go after all this. But what else could he think? He certainly couldn't go asking around at the prefecture. He might never have known if it hadn't been for that newspaper article.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Must Be Madness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valjuan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=valjuan).



Toussaint was not easily excitable by nature and that was good given the rather mysterious lifestyle he was well-aware that he led. Cosette might have had nothing to compare their life together to besides her horrible and largely-forgotten time at the Thénardiers' inn and the convent that everyone knew was not at all like normal life but Toussaint had had a whole life in which to notice what was and was not ordinary behavior. The measures he was forced to take for his own peace of mind to make sure to avoid any sort of trouble with the police or the more unsavory elements were not quite normal but Toussaint had long-since stopped looking surprised when they moved from house to house and never did have any visitors.

And now she was making a commotion in the front room. That was unlike her.

He put down his book and went out to see what the matter was.

"Oh, Monsieur Fauchelevent!" Toussaint exclaimed when she saw him. She was standing by the table Cosette was sitting at and wringing her hands. "It is the most dreadful thing!"

"That is all I've been able to get her to say," Cosette told him with fond tolerance.

As it had been doing since the night of the barricade, that smile hurt his heart. He was always left wondering if this smile would be her last. Either her young man would die and destroy her happiness or else survive and destroy his. One day, he knew, all he would have were these memories, these precious moments that so clearly meant very little to her. Oh, it was not heartlessness on her part. She did love him, she just did not understand how fleeting this brief dream of a family and love truly was.

He never wanted her to understand.

"What happened, Toussaint?" Valjean asked, sitting down in the chair closest to Cosette's.

"They found a body in the river!" Toussaint burst out, looking properly horrified but also a little bit morbidly fascinated.

"A body!" Cosette exclaimed, her eyes wide.

Valjean wondered if he should insist that Cosette leave and not have to hear about this or at least ask Toussaint not to say anything. But, he reasoned, she already knew a little of the fighting that had so wounded her dear love and she had heard this much about a body so surely what few details Toussaint would provide in front of a young lady would be harmless.

"This wasn't just any body, mistress," Toussaint said, warming up to the story. "The man they pulled out was wearing a policeman's uniform!"

"Police?" Cosette repeated, her intrigue growing.

Valjean felt the familiar twinge of apprehension that he did whenever the police were mentioned, even a dead one that had nothing to do with them.

Toussaint nodded. "I heard about it over at the market. There's this laundress, a Madame Martin, who owns a boat and the body had been found right underneath it! Oh, that poor woman! What a shock it must have been for her!"

Cosette shivered. "I can't even imagine! I don't even own a boat but if I did and I went down to use it and found a body…"

Valjean put his hand on hers. "You would never be in a position to go down to a boat alone and I'm sure whoever was with you would deal with any unfortunate necessities if such a thing were to ever happen to you, which I'm sure it wouldn't. This is not a common occurrence, is it, Toussaint?"

Toussaint shook her head vehemently. "Oh, no, Monsieur! It's quite unheard of."

"Do they know who he was?" Cosette asked. "Other than a policeman, I mean."

"They do!" Toussaint went on happily. "The police had been quite worried about him. He went missing the night of the barricades and they had this strange note from him all about how he thought they could improve the running of prisons and treatment of prisoners or something of that sort. They thought he must have been mad and now that he's gone and thrown himself in the river…Well, it's confirmed."

"But who was he?" Cosette pressed.

"Inspector Javert."

That was the last thing that Valjean had ever expected to hear and Cosette must have seen his reaction on his face.

"Papa? Is something wrong?"

"I had heard of Inspector Javert," Valjean told her because he didn't see how he could avoid telling her something and admitting to knowing who Javert was would hardly be a problem if he were dead. "I didn't know him well but I never would have thought he'd go mad and throw himself into a river!"

"Nobody else who knew him would have expected it either, from what I heard," Toussaint added.

"I suppose that, as terrible as it is that someone died at all, it would be much worse to have actually known them," Cosette reasoned. "Was he a good policeman, Papa?"

"He was very dedicated to his job and incorruptible," Valjean said simply. He stayed for a few more minutes before excusing himself back to his room and beginning to pace.

Javert could have been a far worse policeman, certainly, but did that make him a good one? He could not be bought or convinced to let someone get away with a crime no matter the circumstances. Those were good traits. He was dedicated to carrying out the law no matter how unpleasant or difficult he might find that duty. But just the same…he was a man with no mercy. He was a man who would look at an elector attacking a half-dead woman in the snow and decide that she needed to go to prison for six months because she was a prostitute and had the nerve to defend herself. He had saved Fantine, as much as it was possible to save her, but there were surely other Fantine's in Javert's life. And there was no denying that he had been the reason that she died when she dead, miserable and afraid, instead of peacefully dreaming of Cosette's return to her.

It was not Javert's fault that he was faced with those situations, surely, and he had only been trying to do his job and follow the law but…perhaps it was not that Javert was not a good policeman but that the law he swore to serve was not just and right. It would create victims out of those that could not be perfect. Javert faithfully followed the law and was everything that it said he should be. Perhaps he was a good policeman but he could have been a great one. What he had seen that night, agreeing to let Marius live and come back for him after the threat to his life had passed…if Javert had always been that man then it wouldn't be a difficult question.

He would need to confirm this, of course, to make sure that this was not some misunderstanding but if it was true…

That night. Valjean had spent a lot of time wondering what had happened to Javert that night after he had left. Javert had said that he would wait for Valjean to say goodbye to Cosette before he arrested him and brought him back to face his fate but when Valjean had turned to look he was gone. Whatever had happened to him, wherever he had gone and why, it did not make any sense to Valjean but he was not about to go chasing Javert down. He didn't have to say goodbye to Cosette like he had thought he would and that was good because he didn't have any idea how he would even begin to explain it and the thought of parting with her was like daggers in his heart. He knew pain, he knew it intimately, but this was one hurt that he did not think he could survive.

What would have been the point of chasing him down? He had no idea where Javert had even gone. Should he have gone to the police station and asked if he was there because Javert was supposed to arrest him? He didn't trust himself to be able to come up with a plausible lie, he always got so worried when it came to the police and did not know that he had it in him to even step foot inside the police station. What if they recognized him? It was highly improbable after all this time and in Paris but what if it did? He never would have thought to look on the edge of the river. If Javert had decided not to arrest him, as he barely dared to believe was the case, then he was not going to go after him and give him any reason to change his mind.

And Javert had apparently gone from his house to the river. He had gone and jumped in. They said that he was mad. He had seen Javert that night. He might have been the last person to see him alive or at least to speak to him. Had he seen any madness in Javert that night? Was there anything he could have done to stop this?

He had never expected to see Javert at the barricade. After all, those poor young men had been fighting for a better world for everybody and rebelling against the unjust laws that they lived under. They were misguided in their methods, he thought, but it was not as though he could think of any better way for them to have tried to change things. He had tried to change things once in M-sur-M and he had heard a little about what had happened in that town in his absence. Only a little because his heart couldn't take the weight of his choice to save Champmathieu. It was right to free that innocent man but it was not right to abandon the town as he did. He had had no other choice and would have been dragged in chains had he not escaped from the local jail but the consequences of his actions were not something that he could just ignore.

Javert was not a man who seemed to think that there was anything about the law or the government that needed changing and he was probably one of the very few (save perhaps those who were wealthy and influential enough to create the laws in the first place) who felt that way. That made the fact he apparently offered some suggestions about prisons, of all things, all the more stupefying. Why would he be on a barricade? Why would he show up like a ghost from the past, an unpleasant reminder of the life he had given up and that time when all his good intentions had been for naught as he had been sent back to Toulon anyway for the mistakes of years ago? Those crimes, yes even breaking parole, had been committed less than a week after his release from nineteen years in Toulon and he was as vicious and hateful as he had ever been. He hadn't stood a chance.

Javert was there and, for some reason, he hadn't told those young men who Valjean was. He knew. Valjean had seen it in his eyes when he first saw him there. After all that time (how long into their acquaintance in M-sur-M had Javert begun to suspect him? From the very first?) Javert had spent searching for Valjean inside of Madeleine, how could Javert have failed to recognize him again? It was one thing to have known a convict vaguely from years ago and to recognize the limp and the strength more than the face but Javert had learned everything he could about Madeleine and, aside from his hair becoming white, Valjean did not think that he had changed quite so drastically since then.

Why hadn't he said anything? At the time, Valjean had had far too much to worry about to question his own good fortune and had vaguely thought that perhaps Javert had not seen the use. If he was there as a spy and set to be executed then maybe he did not think that the revolutionaries would even care that Valjean was a convict and did not respect them enough to warn them in any case. Had it really been because he had been mad then? What had driven him mad? Being captured? What had those students done to him? Or was he already mad?

Then, of course, there was his strange behavior when Valjean pretended that he was going to kill him so that he would be granted the opportunity to save him. It was perfectly natural that Javert thought that Valjean was going to kill him and, honestly, he would have been worried if Javert hadn't thought that. Not only had he never accepted that Valjean was anything more than a wretched convict but Valjean had actually asked to be the one to kill him. It had not been pleasant for Javert to tell him that it suited him better to kill savagely with a knife than with a gun but, as he had reminded himself, Javert did not truly know him and as he thought he was about to be murdered it was his right to be upset.

No, what had been strange was that when Valjean had surprised Javert by saving his life, he had started walking away before he stopped and said that Valjean was annoying him by letting him go and that he would prefer to be dead. Did he actually think that, if Valjean had made up his mind to spare him, being told Javert would actually like to die would change anything? And, though Javert had not seemed concerned by this, Valjean had noticed that Javert had started to address him respectfully again.

Was that something he should have paid more attention to? Javert actually said that he wished Valjean would kill him. At the time Valjean had dismissed it as Javert being reluctant to owe his life to a criminal but perhaps he had already been mad then.

And then he found Javert, back at his duty already, in a position to arrest him, ruin Cosette's happiness, and ensure Marius' death or to save that young couple and Javert had done the right thing. He had saved Marius and actually agreed to give Valjean a little more time. He should have known something was not right then. Hadn't Javert always refused to bend in the slightest and give even an inch of ground to a criminal? He would not listen about Fantine or give him three days to save Cosette or even have the decency to have that conversation away from Fantine's deathbed but he would let him say goodbye to Cosette?

If he hadn't been so tired and so miserable he might have noticed it.

Oh, he doubted he would have realized what it meant. Javert did not know him but he did not know Javert either, not really. There had to be more to the man than the personification of the law just as there was more to Valjean than the recidivist convict. He also hadn't seen Javert, outside of the time Javert had inadvertently saved him from Thénardier, since M-sur-M back in 1824.

Could he have done something? What could he have done? Let Javert die when he could have saved him? Allowed Javert to arrest him? He had tried to do just that, he had made it very clear to Javert that the moment he saw him he knew he was done running and had already begun to mentally prepare himself for a return to captivity. He couldn't have gone with him right away, though, he knew that that would have meant a death sentence for poor Marius and then where would Cosette be?

Was Javert mad?

Valjean froze as he realized something. Maybe he didn't have any reason to suspect that Javert was mad earlier in the evening but he knew very well just how dedicated Javert was to his job and the time and effort he had put into seeing Valjean languishing in prison.

He knew exactly how much it meant to Javert to be able to treat his superiors with the respect their station demanded but his suspicions about Madeleine had meant enough that he had gone against that to investigate for a very long time. He had somehow found out that Valjean was hiding in Paris and was not really dead and he dressed up as a beggar to make sure then rented a room in the same building before chasing him to the convent. Arresting Valjean mattered to him.

And yet, once Valjean had surrendered himself and was willing to go to prison, Javert had let him go.

It had not made sense then no matter how he tried to explain it. Even if a miracle had occurred and Javert had finally seen Valjean for the good man he had striven these past seventeen years to be, the law still said he needed to go to Toulon and so Javert would send him there.

Valjean pictured the proud and dedicated inspector in his mind and felt a twinge of pity for him. Javert had not been a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. His lack of mercy and compassion was a terrible flaw but he had never allowed himself any, either, and that was also to be pitied rather than scorned. For such a man to have tried so hard to do the right thing always – even when he did not always succeed and never realized he hadn't succeeded – and then to have gone mad at the end?

Javert had deserved better.

Valjean might not have had anything to do with Javert's fate (save allowing him to go on to kill himself rather than being killed by one of the revolutionaries like he was supposed to be) but it saddened him just the same to see such a proud man reduced to such an ignoble end.

"Rest in peace, Javert," Valjean said softly. "May the good God forgive you for what you would never have done if not in the throes of madness."


End file.
